{"id":10216,"date":"2026-04-14T12:33:33","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T12:33:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/eiko-ishibashi-jim-orourke-live-in-london-electronic-ecstasy-from-a-returning-hero-154127\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T12:33:33","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T12:33:33","slug":"eiko-ishibashi-jim-orourke-live-in-london-electronic-ecstasy-from-a-returning-hero-154127","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/eiko-ishibashi-jim-orourke-live-in-london-electronic-ecstasy-from-a-returning-hero-154127\/","title":{"rendered":"Eiko Ishibashi & Jim O\u2019Rourke live in London: electronic ecstasy from a returning hero"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Eiko Ishibashi<\/strong> & Jim O’Rourke
Union Chapel, London
April 13, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Eiko Ishibashi<\/strong> & Jim O\u2019Rourke
Union Chapel, London
April 13, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jim O\u2019Rourke last performed in London in 2004, and a return did not seem likely. Even when the Chicago-born, Japan-based musician, engineer and producer was finally coaxed back on tour a few years ago, with his partner Eiko Ishibashi, it wasn\u2019t certain he\u2019d make it as far as the UK.<\/p>\n

I interviewed the pair in Bologna in May 2023, and O\u2019Rourke seemed set on just playing in the kind of places he\u2019d like to go to on holiday. \u201cThis is the free vacation band,\u201d he explained. \u201cWe\u2019ll play where the food is good, which is why most of these shows have been in Italy.\u201d<\/p>\n

He even told me \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever tour again\u201d, preferring to stay in his studio in rural Japan. So if it felt special to see O\u2019Rourke and Ishibashi perform in an ornate Bolognese church back then, it feels downright extraordinary to have him here at London\u2019s Union Chapel. It\u2019s fair to guess barely anyone here has seen him perform in the last 22 years. By the looks of it, some in attendance may not have been born the last time O\u2019Rourke stepped foot in the UK.<\/p>\n

His \u2018pop\u2019 albums, especially 1999\u2019s playful Eureka<\/em>, continue to find their fans, but that\u2019s not what O\u2019Rourke does these days (Ishibashi\u2019s excellent song albums, such as last year\u2019s sublime Antigone<\/em>, are well worth exploring). Instead, he and Ishibashi have gradually built up their own project over the last few years: instrumental, electronic, longform and mostly improvised. For the seamless hour they play for tonight, he\u2019s on laptop running the complex Kyma sound design software, she\u2019s on a laptop too but often playing a flute through a looper and various pedals.<\/p>\n

The format, concept and instrumentation is the same as on their 2023 tour, then, but the music they play tonight is completely different. Bologna\u2019s set was harsher, a little musique concr\u00e8te, a little more disconnected (you can hear a collage of that tour on their Pareidolia<\/em> album, released last summer), but O\u2019Rourke tells me they \u201cthrew everything out\u201d after that tour \u2013 presumably loops, presets and ideas. Tonight is warmer, more ambient, a little more accessible, with the pair having built an even greater musical rapport.<\/p>\n

The Union Chapel is a large space \u2013 experimental music of this kind doesn\u2019t often get to rooms of this size \u2013 but the music the duo make still has a way of snaking beguilingly through the air; never hurrying, or even moving on its way anywhere, just being, gradually changing like weather.<\/p>\n

The pair begin with Ishibashi\u2019s flute and occasional sub-bass hits from O\u2019Rourke, before warm bell tones and bubbling oceanic drones suggest Edgar Froese\u2019s Aqua<\/em> LP. They move into more freeform ambience with an insectoid undercurrent, adding eerie field recordings of animals, distant talking, the slithering of some creature. Discordant tones and pulsing bass take over, then synth arpeggions, never settling into a pattern.<\/p>\n

The pair work so well together, rarely battling like some free improv, but moving as one, as if the hour-long piece has been painstakingly composed. At around the halfway point, Ishibashi moves back to flute, warped into the sound of a melting saxophone, while O\u2019Rourke spits out arrhythmic drums like a spacey Autechre (incidentally another project that presents their new material as gradually evolving live performances). They move into a very still and sparse section, with ghostly, synthesised, gibbering voices, before things turn a little John Hassell with a flickering nighttime forest of percussion, Ishibashi creating trumpet tones with her flute.<\/p>\n

This then fades to almost nothing but glassy reverberations and a scratchy field recording, until metallic beats and tropical noises suggest Harmonia and Brian Eno\u2019s late-\u201970s collaboration. This breaks down, followed by the unfurling of lush synth pads and long loops of flute that gradually fade to silence.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an astonishing set, a shifting soundscape seemingly composed out of thin air, never to be quite repeated, and it gets a very enthusiastic reception. Afterwards people queue up to speak to Ishibashi and O\u2019Rourke, older fans and young people who may see the latter as some kind of mythical creature. There\u2019s even a joyous reunion with some of O\u2019Rourke\u2019s cousins, who haven\u2019t seen each other in the flesh for decades. Hopefully he can be tempted back again for more, sometime sooner than 2048.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post Eiko Ishibashi & Jim O\u2019Rourke live in London: electronic ecstasy from a returning hero<\/a> appeared first on UNCUT<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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